The Executive Office of Immigration Review (which is responsible for the immigration courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals) has an active Fraud and Abuse Prevention Program (FAPP). I was excited to learn that since May, 2017 the FAPP has been publishing a...

A series of FOIA requests regarding the Attorney General’s decision in Matter of Castro-Tum seem to have revealed something strange about that decision: it was edited after the Attorney General issued it. E-mail messages to and from BIA staff on May 17, 2018,...

It is starting to appear the Department of Justice has chosen not to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision in Pereira v. Sessions because doing so would conflict with the agency’s self-imposed deportation quotas it is placing on Immigration Judges,...

About two months ago I received a document called the “BIA Style Guide” in response to a FOIA request and saw multiple references in the Style Guide to something called the “BIA Webpage” which appeared to be an intranet of sorts, with...

Every summer the Immigration Judges from around the country meet in suburban Washington D.C. for a training session. The training materials are interesting, because they help us understand the IJs’ thinking on specific issues. The 2018 conference was held at the...

I received a final response on my FOIA request for any memoranda or guidance directed to BIA members. I was surprised by how much we received. Here they are: BIA Style Manual_redline_Redacted (242 pgs) 15-05 Handling Cases Involving Certain Applications for...

Although the Supreme Court’s decision in Pereira v. Sessions appears fairly technical and narrow, it isn’t. It casts a light on a practice by the DHS dating back to 1996. In nearly all cases the DHS has served a deficient charging document, called a...

Some concerning developments in the last few days require writing this post when we still don’t have all of the details. Apparently the Immigration Courts are implementing a system of “No Dark Courtrooms,” which may mean Immigration Courts operating...

Without any explanation, the Department of Justice stopped posting its “Immigration Litigation Bulletin” online in mid-2016. The older versions are online here. The Immigration Litigation Bulletin is a publication by the Department of Justice’s...

Three of the pending Operation Janus cases which had been largely dormant the last few months have now been updated on PACER. As I have written previously, these cases are “locked” on PACER, meaning you can read the titles of the documents that have been...